New ways to engage customers in co-designing your company's future - a weblog to complement the book, Outside Innovation, by Patty Seybold

Description

What is Outside Innovation?

It’s when customers lead the design of your business processes, products, services, and business models. It’s when customers roll up their sleeves to co-design their products and your business. It’s when customers attract other customers to build a vital customer-centric ecosystem around your products and services.
The good news is that customer-led innovation is one of the most predictably successful innovation processes.
The bad news is that many managers and executives don’t yet believe in it. Today, that’s their loss. Ultimately, it may be their downfall.

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Observations

LEAD USERS

Eric von Hippel coined the term "lead users" to describe a group of both customers and non-customers who are passionate about getting certain things accomplished. They may not know or care about the products or services you offer. But they do care about their project or need. Lead users have already explored innovative ways to get things done. They're usually willing to share their approaches with others.

LEAD CUSTOMERS

I use the term "lead customers" to describe the small percentage of your current customers who are truly innovative. These may not be your most vocal customers, your most profitable customers, or your largest customers. But they are the customers who care deeply about the way in which your products or services could help them achieve something they care about.

LEAD CUSTOMERS AND LEAD USERS

We’ve spent the last 25 years identifying, interviewing, selecting, and grouping customers together to participate in our Customer Scenario® Mapping sessions. Over the years, we’ve learned how to identify the people who will contribute the most to a customer co-design session. These are the same kinds of people you should be recruiting when you set out to harness customer-led innovation.

HOW DO YOU WIN IN INNOVATION?

You no longer win by having the smartest engineers and scientists; you win by having the smartest customers!

CUSTOMER CO-DESIGN

In more than 25 years of business strategy consulting, we’ve found that customer co-design is a woefully under-used capability.

Intellectual Property

June 14, 2013

I can’t ignore Edward Snowden’s whistle-blowing revelation: The US government is snooping much more than our US Constitution allows on the private communications of its citizens, residents, and even lawmakers. Not to mention the rampant electronic eavesdropping being carried out by our spies hacking Internet and phone systems in most other countries. This is not a good time to be an American in the world. It’s embarrassing to be living in a “democratic” country that has turned fascist since 9/11.

It’s not my practice to speak out on politics to my clients. But I can’t ignore the fact that my most loyal customers have been discussing these events quite volubly online since the news broke. Their consternation isn’t so much political as it is technical: it appears that the NSA’s snooping has actually compromised ALL of the certificate-authority based security provisions that our entire global economy depends upon!

There are two main consequences from these revelations that I foresee. But I also fear that PR spin, human nature (bury our heads in the sand), and apathy (I have other things to worry about; I don’t have time to worry about whether I’m being spied upon) will, once again, prevail.

January 22, 2013

On Friday, January 11th, 2013, the girlfriend of 26-year old Aaron Swartz discovered that he had hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment. The Internet and social media sphere was quickly flooded with expressions of grief and outrage.

Who Was Aaron Swartz?

Aaron Swartz was an amazing visionary and activist who created tools and movements to empower, inform, and mobilize people. He was involved in developing and contributing to many of the tools upon which information sharing on the Internet are based, including Really Simple Syndication (RSS), the XML content type for the Resource Description Framework (RDF) of the W3C, and Web.py (a lightweight Web framework developed in Python).

He built Infogami (a Wiki application framework built on Web.py), which he used to launch a business that he merged with Reddit, which was, in turn, sold to Conde Nast. He used that same framework to build the architecture for the Open Library, a project to create “one Web page for every book ever published,” which now houses 20 million book records and 1 million e-books. He was one of the major creators of and contributors to Archive.org. He collaborated with his mentor, Lawrence Lessig, in the creation of the framework for Creative Commons’ licensing.

The changes are fairly minor. Yet, there’s been a furor surrounding the new policy. Why? Google is trying to be more forthright and explicit about what information it gathers, what information it stores, and what information it shares. Many people, myself included, have been semi-comfortable enjoying convenient tools and more targeted advertising even though we know that every move we make online is logged and analyzed by Google’s automated systems and then that information is aggregated and used to ensure that advertisers’ ads will turn up in front of people who are looking for their products and services (or to people who will be receptive to those offers).

I believe that what has made me much more uncomfortable about this quid pro quo over the past year is my reluctant awareness that, in the U.S. at least, the Patriot Act and other government programs that are ostensibly designed to protect us are empowering the U.S. government to demand warrantless access to the logs of our online behavior. Who has the most complete picture of what we do and care about? Google. What does Google do with that information? It keeps the logs linked to our profiles for 18 months before it severs the connection to our identity and makes the information non-attributable to a particular person. And, when a government agency makes a “legal request,” Google complies by handing over the logs of what it knows about our online activities for the last 18 months. While I am not a terrorist nor a pedophile, I don’t know what behavior of mine could trigger a sudden interest on the part of Big Brother.

July 21, 2010

I had been expecting Google to take its marbles and go
home—abandoning China to Baidu and other local players. This
expectation was, in part, due to the great analysis I read and commented on, in Tricia Wang's Cultural Bytes
blog. So I was pleasantly surprised this week to learn that Google and
the Chinese government had come to an accommodation that renewed
Google's license in China and lets Google continue to serve Chinese
customers, but still host their servers in Hong Kong as they’ve been
doing since the beginning of the year.

Josh Noble at the Financial Times sheds more light on WHY the Chinese government
renewed Google's license at the last minute, by quoting the Eurasia Group
heavily: To paraphrase, the Chinese succumbed because
Chinese scientists and geeks rely heavily on Google, and
Chinese industry relies heavily on its scientists and geeks. Josh
quotes the Eurasia Group:

"Google had won the loyalty of Chinese scientists
and engineers. This powerful constituency sits at the
nexus of every strand of China's
industrial modernization effort. And its members often prefer
using Google to its Chinese competitor, Baidu, the limited search
capabilities of which would constrain
access to international technical books, papers, data,
and websites, and which cannot compete with Google's
popular translator tool."

February 19, 2010

It’s
not often that we’re faced with the dilemma of choosing between two
exceptional customer experiences. The advent of Apple’s iPad poses that
dilemma for me. I’m almost certain that once I start using Apple’s
iPad, I will use my Amazon Kindle less and less. And that means that my
impulse buying, not just of digital books, magazines, and newspapers,
but also of digital music, movies, TV shows, and games will move to
Apple. Why? Because the iPad is seductive. It embodies the incredible
Apple “i-”user experience and I’ll be able to enjoy crisp black and
white reading, brilliant color reading, and interact with my content,
my friends and colleagues, and the world while relaxing in my favorite
leather armchair or lying in my hammock.

This
troubles me. I am seduced by the iPhone, but I’m still in love with the
Amazon customer experience. Amazon has made my life easy since 1994. I
entrust most of my purchases to Amazon. They rarely let me down. I’ve
had great customer experiences. I act on many of the recommendations
they give me because they know what I love.

Seeking Advice When Torn between Two Loves

So, this week, I sent out an SOS to my family, friends, and my smartest
customers—Patty’s Pioneers and Patty’s Visionaries—the people who are
my role models—the lead users who break new ground in customer
experience and business innovation. I asked them for advice: Advice for
me and advice for Amazon. Here are a few of the things they recommended
for me, for other loyal Amazon customers, and for Jeff Bezos at Amazon
to consider:

According to my clients, Amazon should:

1. Make it easy to buy digital goods FOR all platforms FROM all platforms.

2. Sell easily portable content

3. Provide the best digital library and back-up services

4. Continue to offer the Kindle Reader software across all devices

5. Support color and better graphics on its e-Readers

6. Sponsor an Open Source e-reader platform

7. Embrace ePub and other E-Book formats that are publishers’ standards

July 08, 2009

Way
before my Dad showed symptoms of Alzheimer's, he advocated for
patients' access to their electronic patient records. On a personal
note, he was afraid that none of his doctors and specialists would have
the whole picture. He feared they might miss something important. He
felt it was his responsibility, and that of his family members, to
assemble and preserve our medical records so that we could all control
our own healthcare. He began to advocate about the need for electronic
medical records and for patients to have unfettered access to their own
records. In the 1980s, he convened meetings at his retirement home, in
which he and other residents, many of whom were retired physicians,
told the management and caregivers at their assisted living facility,
what they expected and wanted: to have all of their medical records
digitized, to have these readily available for themselves, their family
members, and any medical specialists who would be called upon to serve
them.

John W. Seybold

My father was a remarkable man. As the "father" of computerized typesetting in the 1960s, he knew a thing or
two about computers and digital information. He didn't live to see his
own records available in digital form. But if he were still alive, he
would be an active advocate for patient’s access to their complete
digital medical records. So it's up to me to carry on!

October 28, 2008

How consumer attitudes towards TV have changed.. primetime networks crossed with cable networks in 2002/2003.. in terms of marketshare... So major networks have increased their cable share. We're an industry that has had to shift to make changes in terms of consumer viewing habits.

DVRs is one of the most fundamental shifts.. 34% of people who watch The Office do so in a time-shifted mode. So we're doing a lot of stuff to keep viewers and consumers engaged throughout the time-shifted experience.

Showed same Broadband and Internet chart.. Video online is now a reality. The pipe is wide open. If you look at the growth of YouTube.. 28 billion minutes spent last year 90% growth; 300 million users.

Since adoption rates (new technology coming up to 50% adoption) is happening faster and faster, so we as content providers have to up our rates of delivering content on all platforms. Multiple screens going at the same time, e.g. watching tv, surfing online, IM'ing with friends, etc.

September 05, 2008

Whenever Google announces a new major application, it's big news. This week,
Google announced a new browser. I have to admit that despite my discomfiture at
having yet another browser environment to learn, and to support for our
end-customers, I am intrigued.

Comic Book Used as
Launch Collateral

Google appears to be targeting technorati first—not just the usual technical
early adopters, but the developer/architect community. I found the most
interesting and useful part of the Chrome launch collateral to be the 38-page Chrome comic book. (Comics are a
great way to convey a lot of information quickly. Product marketers of many
other categories of products should take note!)

User-Generated Comic
Book Parodies!

I wonder whether Google expected users to immediately begin creating spoofs
using its own marketing collateral. But that's what has happened. If you want a
quick way to see all the negative reactions to Google Chrome, check out these
comic parodies:

For those of you who want a shortcut to the technical pros and cons of Chrome,
check out Charles Nutter's A Few Thoughts on
Chrome.

Why You Should Pay
Attention to Chrome

Anything Google does is important, since Google is the most powerful and most
widely used platform on the Internet today. From a business/marketing
standpoint, you'll want to be sure that your Web sites and portals are
Chrome-friendly. From a technology strategy standpoint, you now have yet
another browser and Web application platform to support and to consider when
designing information and tools for your prospects, customers, employees, and
stakeholders. Think of Chrome as a next-generation Web OS for rich Internet
apps.

Google Strategy #1:
Track Everything We Do

The biggest "aha" in Google Chrome is that the browser bar and the search bar
are now one and the same. This makes a lot of sense to those of us who have
become used to just typing a word or phrase to get to the right site(s).

March 21, 2008

Here’s an update on one of the companies featured in Outside Innovation.
CohesiveFT is a software company. Their products are digital. But I
believe that some of the patterns we’re seeing as customers create
their own digital products hold up well for physical products or for
hybrid physical/service products.
In
fact, I’m writing this post from St. Louis, the center of the Bio-Belt,
where the products that are sold—seed for growing corn, soybeans,
fruits, and vegetables—are designed and packaged in ways that are
surprisingly similar to today’s hardware and software. As Monsanto's CIO, Mark Showers, explained to me, what’s going on
in bio-agriculture is that there’s an increasing split between the
hardware (the seed or germ plasm) and the software (the traits) of a
plant. Advanced bio-technology has made it possible to optimize the
traits at each layer of the seed stack (below ground/roots;
ground-level/weeds and pests; above ground/leaves, flowers, fruit). In
fact, today’s hybrids come in triple-stacks—soon there will be 4 to 6
stacks—of optimized traits. Farmers select the traits they need in
their seeds based on the soil conditions, pest patterns, weather
patterns, and their expectations of what the growing season will hold.
(Then they hedge their bets through commodities trading where they make
their real money!) While farmers don’t CONFIGURE the optimal seed
traits at each layer today (that’s done in the lab and on the
manufacturing farms), they do SELECT seeds with optimal traits at each
layer for different sections of their farmland. It’s a very
sophisticated and complex set of choices. Much of the value of the seed
resides in the intellectual property involved in optimizing each layer
of the stack for the precise conditions required and in the ability to
mix and match these traits to meet the particular requirements of a
particular strip of farmland in a given micro-climate. Companies
license the intellectual property—the traits—to one another.

Awesome! I can't wait to see what happens as the geeks who have already flocked to XBox contribute their coding skills to creating games for the Xbox platform. It's not yet clear to me how truly "open" this platform is, e.g. whether game developers will be able to extend each others' games. The image at the right is from "Culture" -- one of the seven user-created games developed bt Hidden Path Entertainment using the XNA platform that Microsoft featured at the Game Developers Conference.

Here's the description included in the official press release:

"An Xbox 360 community game created using Microsoft's XNA Game Studio
software and XNA Creators Club membership will be able to be submitted
for distribution on Xbox LIVE. Each community-created game must then
undergo a thorough peer-review process and be evaluated for accuracy in
representation and appropriateness. Community game developers will be
able to beta test the process this spring and will be able to
distribute their games on Xbox LIVE by the end of this year."

I look forward to learning more about how "open" this environment is.. Of course, Microsoft hopes to attract millions of budding game developers. The official release goes on to say:

"Xbox 360 once again broke new ground by introducing a new, open
distribution service for games created by the community and soon
playable by its 10 million Xbox LIVE members. Community-created games
on Xbox LIVE will quickly double the size of the Xbox 360 game library.
By the end of 2008, Xbox 360 owners will have access to more than 1,000
games, making it the largest, most creatively diverse library across
all next-generation platforms."

At the Games Developer Conference this week,

"Chris Satchell, general manager and chief XNA architect at Microsoft,
announced that seven games created using XNA Game Studio 2.0 would be
available immediately for Xbox 360 owners to download from Xbox LIVE
Marketplace."

In reading through some of the heated discussions among participants at this week's Game Developers' Conference, the "consensus" seems to be that Microsoft is releasing a true "Game Developers' Platform" and creating a marketplace in which game developers can strut their stuff, whereas Spore (coming in October 2008) and LittleBigPlanet (LBP) are "content-creation systems inside of a game."

The second "opening up" of Microsoft this week is of course the announcement that Microsoft will finally publish open APIs both to its OS and to its office applications.